Her Other Shadow
by Randomiss
Summary: It–he, is a demon of a different breed. He is her other shadow, the only one she ever asked for. Set shortly after the events of ADWD.
**Her Other Shadow**

Everywhere she goes, memories of the High Sparrow's punishment haunt her. They claw at her back along with the rest of the ghosts already clinging there, elongate her shadow, twist it into a misshapen, hideous thing with a smile dragged downwards. She has spent most of her life fending such lesser creatures off and away from herself, paying them little heed in the day's hurry; until recently, she'd thought them of no greater significance than moths rushing to their own burning death, throwing themselves to the flames of the sun that catches so well in the molten gold of her hair. But her luxurious curls are gone, now. They took that, too, along with her dignity, along with her Joffrey, along with her crown. With nothing to burn them with, it's getting burdensome, keeping all the invisible worms fretting her bones at arm's length.

She fears the day that they might get the better of her, for then even the Stranger might not be able to mend the gaping unstitch between sanity and where she'll have drifted to, and she knows then and there that it will be her undoing.

But she has another creature following her every step within the Red Keep too. It–he–is a demon of a different breed. He is there at every corner, a ghost limb helping her retain her balance.

She used to walk with her chin hoisted up and her back arched gracefully like a reaping hook, a lioness in heat, clad in her family's proud colours and her own regal glow. The sun of those days has burned out (she has no gold left on her to ensnare it).

She carries herself more inclined now (layers of chaste silk concealing this new, invidious lack of gold), bent and low and flexed and the furthest thing from broken. They are fools to think this is enough to have her claws rusted. No, the lion simply dons herself in a snake's crusty skin, walks and moves and talks like something of the earth to better downplay her lurid fate. Where they hear a toned-down, subdued parlance, Cersei Lannister hears a hiss. Where they see a woman refracted, both in body and spirit, Cersei Lannister sees a viper waiting.

He must see those things too, marching behind her with a face obscured by the forged steel of his helm. He must know, otherwise his presence wouldn't feel anywhere near as innate. He is her other shadow, the only one she ever asked for. Of course, she does not let herself fall victim to the illusion that he is to be completely trusted (Jaime was her other half and he betrayed her plenty, cordially and of his own will), and so she always keeps an eye out for the huge man's imposing conformation, never quite at ease with him. But then again, she hardly ever is anyway. When it is not someone on the outside, it is the nightmares and Tyrion's grinning, miscreated lineament that prickle the corners of her mind.

Still, Qyburn is the closest thing she has to an ally, and Ser Robert is his growth, so she allows, even seeks for him to be near her at all times. The air of him has grown on her, she realizes, soothes her awful, cramping rancour for the world.

She often finds herself staring at the man over the course of a stale, lumpish afternoon trapped on all sides by the succulent floating faces of pious septas (she thought she would be rid of them once they let her out of the Sept of Baelor, but alas), awaiting and dreading and anticipating the day of her trial, when that very same man is not allowed to fail her. And she has observed him well. The man is so big, it's well-nigh unholy. His fist is twice the size of Robert's, thrice the size of a normal man's. His shoulders are as broad as the Small Council's sessional table (the large oaken one that she recalls from back when father helmed the meetings and everything was the way it should be, not the smaller beechen one that came after, along with all the ambitious, conniving spilth), and just standing close to him makes her feel cornered. That is good. Her champion's armoured bulk must be no less macabre than the yeasty razor of her own burning thoughts.

She's tried peering behind the dead weight of his ornate helm (Lannister lion; where she is not allowed to carry her colours on display so distinctly anymore, he is there to fill in for her), but to no avail. She's only ever caught mere glimpses of those bloodshot, glassy eyes of his that never leave her for a moment's fraction.

Today is no different. On her knees for what feels like the thousandth prayer, with the severe odour of shrivelled maidens filling the room, Cersei once again steals a glance at her champion standing guard by the door. Her gaze lingers, in an attempt to shake off the vivid pictures of filthy streets and cheering crowds that emerge and enliven from the deepest and darkest soils of her mind whenever she closes her eyes to try and speak to the Seven (she usually just ends up cursing them, but that's something the septas needn't concern themselves with).

He is as always: tall and brooding and gilded from head to toe. _Good_ , she thinks. _Good_. If he is made for her, then he is to be no less than a god (she _deserves_ a god, a real god, not like the seven deaf statues that hardly listen and never answer).

When a septa's hoarse voice commands her to bend over herself lower as to better attest her deepest respect for the gods, Cersei entertains the thought of ordering her shadow to cut the old woman's throat open, honour the gods the only way she's ever been thought how: with thick, hot, cleansing blood.

She keeps her lips pursed as she brings her upper body to lean forward even more, the hard wooden floor giving her flesh a scrape her knees are alarmingly well-accustomed to by now, allows another lecture on purity and rediscovering the path of redemption.

They call on them for Cersei's afternoon bath at some point. The worms crackle too loudly under her skin today, too vividly for her particular liking, and after countless of failed attempts to scrub them off with sleek water, she is well aware this will get her nowhere.

 _Little do you know, you misguided, foolish lot, red rains will wash me clean best._

She excuses herself, devout and courteous like the Maid herself, blames the paleness in her face on the turning of the weather (winter will be upon them, sooner rather than later), and suggests they let her rest in her chambers.

A few raised eyebrows, some rustle, peasantry voices quietly deciding the fate of her afternoon, but they eventually withdraw in a swish of rough fabric, dark shadows retracting back in the corners (she's been so _good_ as of late, so very sedulous with her prayers and her worship and her humility; all bitter morsels in her mouth, but it is all going to pay off soon enough). They leave her alone in the vast room, save for Ser Robert and a younger (by their standards) thing that sits like a dead toad in the corner.

Cersei lies on the bed, and suddenly the empty space within and outside is so very heavy, almost like another person's weight pressed against her heaving chest. She loathes how she nearly wishes more of them had stayed.

 _Gods_ , she berates herself. _Have I truly turned so meek?_

The thought angers her. She clicks her tongue and hisses, to the devout woman's most apparent fright. She's clearly heard things.

They won't let her have any wine, but food is still not beneath the High Sparrow's fanatic mind, and so she asks for an early supper so that she can be spared the remaining woman's horrible intakes of breath as well. The wench seems almost as relieved to leave the room as her queen is to have herself rid of the obnoxious presence.

Once the door creaks shut behind the scurrying lass, there is only silence. Ser Robert is barely perceptible at the door, sword hand hooked over the gargantuan hilt of his long blade. Now that they are alone, she can truly appreciate how pleasantly soundless he is.

She almost enjoys the solitude for a bit before the worms come crawling up her spine again. They won't let her rest, they, not even for the slightest slices of time. Not before she's dealt with all of her enemies. They have grown to be quite the compelling pile. She'll crush them all like flies under her thumb, make them understand what it means to have provoked the lion's all-consuming wrath. Decades from now, bards will not be singing _The Rains of Castamere_ on feasts at great halls. They will be singing a sweeter, crueller tune. The song of how the lioness triumphed over all the filth that was once King's Landing, of how she danced across the backs of dead roses and laughed over the monuments of broken gods.

Cersei laughs, cruelly and emptily like a glass breaking.

The sweet thoughts bring her no peace, though. The more she craves her vengeance, she is beginning to realize, the hungrier the worms get. She frets and twists and finally rolls off the bed, strolls to the window, but the smells of the city are the last thing she needs, really, what with the recent recollections they bring to life, laced with a more immediate unpleasantness that has her crinkling her nose in aversion.

 _I shouldn't have sent that girl away._

She begrudges the thought before her mind even conceives it, but she can no longer deny the reality of it. She can't be on her own.

Spite coils tighter in her belly. _They did this to me._ She's been down the wet, dank, cold dungeons for so very long, she's forgotten how not to corrode herself.

There is still too much time before the wench is due to return with a tray. Too much time and too much emptiness. The worms are crazed within her. _Quiet_ , she tries to tell them, soothe them, desperate for relief. _Endure this torture just a little longer. Then we shall have our rest._ Her head throbs still; her worms are as merciless to her as she is to everyone else. Her head spins and the world tilts just a little, and she lurches, gasping airlessly.

When she opens her eyes she lays awkwardly in the air, hovering a few inches off-ground. She blinks up at her rescuer, whose strong arms are now around her, safely caging her in their surprisingly gentle metal grip. _No man moves this quickly._

But then again, he is no man.

His eyes are fixed on her like they always seem to be, empty like her laughter. She exhales, breath coming out ragged from her parted dry lips, and feels as some of his quietness pours into her, muting the terrible gnawing that has her on the edge of some precipice from which she knows there would be no return. It feels good, the quiet. The tranquillity. She finds herself in need of more of it.

He stays frozen, a statue cut from polished marble, awaiting her word of order. She gives it, because that's what she's designed for, really. He carries her to the bed at her command, places her amongst the hollows of the soft pillows. Another word from her and he is kneeling next to her, helm and shoulders still towering above her eyelevel even though she has the purchase of the bed and he is genuflected dutifully on the ground.

She rolls on her belly and wills him to stay as he is, seizing this opportunity to get a closer, more detailed look at him. Her very first. Up close, he looks much more fragile than he should. His skin seems cracked, scrunched, wax-white and not right, and the sight of it alone makes Cersei wonder how he keeps himself from falling apart. _It is because of me_ , she thinks, and finds her cheeks warming with an odd sort of thrill at the thought. _He will not be done with this world until I am done with my enemies. He lives and dies at my whim._

Dark half-moons creep under his beady eyes, making his stare even more saturated, mindless, reflecting her own face that, too, bares a similar look.

But that is preposterous. She is no beast and has nothing to share with animals. She is the queen and a lion. It is not her place to bear a witless thing's nothingness in her eyes. And yet there she is, drifting away in the eyes of something that slightly reminds her of wild boars, of Robert, of the frightened look in Melara's eyes as she was falling down the well.

Cersei feels conflicted. Between the fragility and the strength of this man, of her own self, and the power of wielding it all as she pleases. She extends a slender finger, does something that has been on her mind since the day he scooped her in his arms and shielded her from the roaring crowd.

The metal of his breastplate gives a slight hiss under the drag of her index, cold and unyielding as her father's gaze had once been. The creature remains still and silent as her finger rouses, drawing up along the length of his jaw. Same metal; same hiss.

This cannot be all of him.

She wants something different from him. Something that will make her skin crawl, something that will fascinate her or frighten her or kill her or immortalize her. It must be somewhere in there, woven in the countless layers of forged steel, if he has been made for her, it must be, otherwise Qyburn would not have said this man will be the death of them all.

She seeks for it under his hard chin as her fingers work there, the long mirror across the spacious room reflecting the beautiful, terrifying image of a mistress scratching her beloved beastly pet, then between the rocks that comprise the relief of the armour covering his abdomen. When her scramble is left unrewarded, her hand sinks lower still.

 _How befitting_ , she thinks. _Is it not that a man's greatest strength and weakness lies with his sword?_

But this is no man. Perhaps it is there indeed, whatever it is that she looks for. Perhaps she _will_ find only strength residing down there.

He gives no obvious reaction when she rubs against him. She likes that. She likes a man not led astray by his cock for a change. _This one won't betray me for the quick spread of some younger whore's legs. He will do whatever I ask of him and he will not question._ (A beast won't ever–can't–question.) _He will be loyal to me to the death._

The conclusion stirs something within her. A sense of ownership, the same feeling that had her throw the little schemer down the well all those years ago. He is her loyal property, and properties need to be marked, loyalties – paid for. She flicks her tongue across her dried lips.

"Stand up," she commands hoarsely, unable to swallow the ashes that fill up and occlude the inside of her throat.

The rest is easy. All it takes to get him under her is one short sentence, bed creaking its meek protest beneath the excessive weight of his bulk and impossibly heavy armour, her fumbling with the laces of his breeches (she is not usually that clumsy, but nothing is in its rightful place with this huge armour bedecking an already huge man, and it has been a while).

He is only hard because she tells him to be.

As she sinks atop of him, she expects nothing but hollowness. Drabness. Everything it is when it is not Jaime.

Nothing has ever even lingered close to how her brother makes her feel. No man has anything on how he used to touch her, hands gliding over her body like they were a part of it, pushing between her dripping thighs like the welcome visitor he used to be. She tries recalling the exact way he would claim her breath and make her whole, but the images keep breaking into shards, sharp and tangy like the words he never wrote back in reply to her desperate plea.

Refusing to back down, she snakes a hand between her thighs, trying to replicate his movements, the friction, the feel, bent on coaxing _something_ out of this, some sensation, anything at all. She wants to feel whole again, oh, how she needs her Jaime, where is he, with his strong hands and quick, clever tongue, his hard prick...

Just as she is about to lose herself to the string of desperate thoughts, a gilded, gloved hand covers her own. She nearly jumps, looking down to where her body is connected to the man beneath her, his huge paw nudging her hand away and replacing it. _I have not commanded him to_ , she realizes, and fear immediately overtakes her. Has she misjudged him? What lays beneath that prodigious helm in truth? If men can go mad with desire, then what of a wild beast's insatiable hunger?

Horrifying images of her bleeding to death under him are already flooding her mind as she tries to get off him, but he holds her in place, one hand gripping the flesh on her thigh, the other resting firmly at the apex of her legs.

She can't scream for help. How could she be so reckless? Gods, if any of the septas are to discover them like this... _They will send me back to the dungeons, or worse, yes, worse, they will have my head for certain this time_. It will be the end of her.

"Unhand me," she breathes, lowly and poisonously to cover up her apprehensions.

He does not speak. He only slides his hand up the outside of her thigh, steadying her as his other one begins to work between her legs.

Cersei gasps. The metal is cold and makes her flinch at first, but that hand is Jaime's. That much she is sure of. She's had him too many a time to ever mistake the feel of his fingers, the elusive patterns that they paint on her skin. He moves the same way, holds her forcefully down the same way, deliciously knowing and disobedient to her words.

"Jaime." The name spills from between her swollen lips, a prayer for something she thought forever lost.

Her eyes go squinting as she calls to mind their many silver nights together, his deft touches, his very presence...

The man beneath her follows the trail of her thoughts like a copycat. _This cannot be_ , she thinks for a brief moment, head lull with surprise relish at the new-found stretch of her body. _He can't know these things._

But it makes perfect sense now. That is why his presence feels so very natural to her. That is why she seeks him out.

She sways her waist back and forth, feels him match her just right. Her breath quickens. She regards him with a deep, curious frown, grass green meeting translucent blue. She repeats the motion. Then does it again. And again. And again.

Sensations build up within her as Ser Robert's face fuses with Jaime's and with Rhaegar's and with Robert's, an endless game of switching masks. She imagines a hand extending to her chest, and a moment later huge fingers clasp around her breast in answer to her unspoken command.

He plays the tune of her body just as expertly as she plays the tune of his mind.

And all of a sudden, she realizes there is no need for any of this. This man is already bought and paid for. Qyburn has commissioned the Stranger himself for him, paid with a dead man's blood and her living hatred, and what is happening right now, it is about her.

The thought makes her head spin with a palette of sensations she has no name for. She feels the queen again, her crown gaining a sharper, truer form with each jerk of her hips.

Her hair is still shorter than most men's, but she claws at the hood she wears these days and pulls it down, wanting to feel no restrictions at all. She feels no shame when his eyes fall on her, perks her chin up and laughs the laugh of a little girl who liked playing till late in the gardens of Casterly Rock. This time, it feels more substantial, more like herself.

She thinks of children, of Joffrey and of Tommen, her baby boy, conceived like this, with her rocking atop Jaime on a warm summer night, cool breeze catching in her hair.

Children are so very fragile; so very breakable. They bear their parents' mortal ply. But this is no mortal. This is something other, and a child conceived of their coil surely ought to inherit his strength, his unyielding, immortal gist. A child like that will not be cruelly taken away from her by the world, the way her sweet Joffrey was.

Cersei cries out, speeding her movements.

A beautiful, golden sun to light up her days, yes, that is what she needs, a flawless and indestructible thing, just like the very love she already feels for it.

Her champion's hands are on her hips, helping her, guiding her by her own command, and it feels like fucking herself, really, and she never ever wants to stop. It's all a blur, now, as the fire of a thousand dragons rushes through her core, setting her ablaze from within as her shadow arches up into her, blessed seed flooding her with the promise of something to last.

It is the prospect of another child that has her choking back a scream as she climaxes, hard and sweet and painful, fingers scrambling over the sleek surface of his breastplate in seek of purchase as she flings her hips wildly, any rhythm or sense or reason long lost to her.

Ser Robert never tries to caress her afterwards; there is no point. She orders him to rearrange himself as she threads a hand through her choppy hair and brings it back under the hood. She watches as the different sections of his gilded metal shift and reshuffle, shrink back, the only evidence of what they have just done a thin layer of sweat glistening on her body, and the slightly dishevelled folds of her skirts.

Upon the wench's return, Ser Robert is again situated by the door, calm and silent as the night. But later, when Cersei is once more bent over for another obnoxious prayer, she secretly flashes him a glare, and she swears she catches a gleam in his eye that has not been there before.

 _I indwell two bodies, now. The one beautiful and the other strong._

She smiles.

 _The Seven help the little roses. I am whole at last._

* * *

#sorrynotsorry


End file.
